Efficient navigation for anyshape holonomic mobile robots in dynamic environments

Platforms with holonomic drives are particularly interesting due to their maneuvering capabilities. Robots used for transportation tasks usually have a non-circular footprint. In this work, we present a navigation strategy for a holonomic mobile robot with anyshape footprint. Our technique introduces an efficient navigation method based on a strategy that makes use of discrete and continuous techniques. We introduce compact discrete intervals to represent the free space for computing fast-to-update plans. Based on these, we provide a continuous motion generation approach to generate smooth motions that are fast to compute. We evaluated our approach by running simulated experiments and by using a real holonomic L-shaped robot. Our experiments demonstrate that our technique can be carried out online and is able to smoothly drive the robot to its goal locations even in dynamic environments.